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RELATED 
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WILLIAM E.BARTON 

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FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH 



My son, in thy sickness be not negligent ; 

But pray unto the Lord, and He shall heal thee. 

Put away wrong doing, and order thine hands aright, 

And cleanse thy heart from all manner of sin. 

Then give place to the physician, for verily the Lord hath 

created him ; 
And let him not go from thee, for thou hast need of him. 
There is a time when in their very hands is the issue for good, 
For they also shall beseech the Lord 
That He may prosper them in giving relief and in healing for 

the maintenance of life. 

EcclesiasticuS) xxxviii. 9-15. 



Eije 3©ay's WLoxk gtxits 



FAITH AS RELATED 
TO HEALTH 



BY 

WILLIAM E. BARTON, D. D. 

Author of " The Psalms and Their Story," 
"A Hero in Homespun," "Pine Knot," 
" The Improvement of Perfection," etc. 




BOSTON 
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 

MDCCCCI 



THE UtHARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Co*»C8 Rectivt© 

AUG. 26 t§01 

CLASS ^XXa H: 
COPY A. 



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Copyright, igoi 

By L. C. Page & Company 

(incorporated) 

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Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. 

Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 



PREFACE. 

THE REASON FOR THIS LITTLE BOOK. 

Not long since I preached a sermon on "The Heal- 
ing Christ," in which I had occasion to speak some- 
what at length of those alleged works of healing which, 
under various names, now claim the right to be known 
as distinctively Christian. Certain people who heard 
the sermon asked for its publication, and I consented. 
The sermon, however, was one of a series extending 
from Christmas to Easter, and considering in chrono- 
logical order the more important events and aspects 
of the Life of Christ. The portion which fitted it in 
its place in the series unfitted it for separate publication, 
and the part for which its publication was requested 
came in for discussion somewhat incidentally. In pre- 
paring the manuscript for the press, therefore, I shaped 
it anew as a discussion of faith-healing in its various 
forms. 

As thus printed for local circulation, the pamphlet 
elicited a prompt demand, growing out of general 
interest in the subject. The thousand copies were 
quickly gone, and requests were received for more. I 
have taken occasion to enlarge the booklet in pre- 
paring the present edition, and to change the order of 



Vlll PREFACE. 

some of the matter, but have omitted nothing of con- 
sequence from the former edition. 

This discussion is not intended to provoke con- 
troversy, nor to deal uncharitably with the beliefs or 
practices of any group of Christians. It attempts a 
brief, and the author hopes a sensible and candid, 
discussion of Christ's miracles of healing, and of some 
of the various modern schools of mental cure. 

First Church Study , Oak Park, Illinois. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Preface vii 

The Spirit of This Inquiry n 

The Natural and the Supernatural. . . .13 

Christ's Miracles of Healing 17 

Various Modern Systems 24 

Roman Catholic Cures 33 

A Protestant's Explanation 39 

A Test Case 41 

Other Forms of Mental Cure 44 

Absent Treatment 48 

The Resemblances and Differences in These Systems 51 

The Discount on the Cures 53 

The Dangers of These Delusions . . . .54 

The Healing of True Faith 59 



FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 



I. The Spirit of This Inquiry. 

The past few. years have witnessed the rise of several 
organisations which seek for bodily healing through 
religious devotion. Opinions differ widely as to the 
value of these several systems of faith-cure or mind- 
cure, and many honest people are in doubt. Any 
subject concerning which so much of controversy exists 
calls for our most candid investigation ; and any so 
closely related to the deep tragedies of life calls for 
our most sympathetic criticism. In such a spirit of 
candour and of sympathy I would begin this very brief 
discussion. 

Who is there that does not sympathise with the quest 
of the afflicted for relief from physical suffering ? To 
the young Buddha, the burden of the world's pain 
became so great that he gave his life to its relief. To 
the Christ, the sigh of the sorrowful, the moan of the 
sick, came ever as an appeal to the Divine sympathy. 
It is little wonder that systems not a few should have 
grown up in our own day in which faith in bodily 
healing is a cardinal principle. 



12 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

I do not wish to speak of these systems with any 
lack of Christian charity. In the presence of pain 
and fear and anxiety and death, I would speak with 
all tenderness. I have only kind words for those whose 
sickness has driven them to the use of unusual means 
in hope of relief. Whether it be relief that is found at 
the shrine of a dead saint with the pile of disused 
crutches before it, or the wholeness that follows a 
Protestant's anointing and prayer, or the benefit de- 
rived from purely mental treatment, if there be evidence 
of real healing, that fact at least challenges respect 
in proportion to the reality of the cures alleged, and 
the sincerity of those who procure or experience them. 
All these systems must be judged, however, by reason, 
and not alone by sympathy. They stand or fall by 
certain tests to which all must submit. Their points 
in common must be determined, their differences dis- 
covered, and their relation to the miracles of Scripture 
and to psychological laws made clear. The assumption 
of any system that it is superior to these tests would 
be prima facie evidence that it is not genuine. By the 
principles of simple common sense, truth must be es- 
tablished, and error disclosed. 



II. The Natural and the Supernatural. 

It is not well for us to discredit all unusual exhibi- 
tions of healing power because they seem to involve 
the supernatural. There are more things in heaven 
and earth than are understood in our philosophy. 
Many things are certainly true which we do not under- 
stand. The line between the natural and the super- 
natural is the horizon line of man's discovery ; all things 
are equally natural and none are supernatural to God. 
Man himself is a supernatural being, partaking of the 
life and power of God. Let him not too readily dis- 
credit the powers which are yet above him, nor deny 
facts because their causes are at present inscrutable. 

On the other hand, there is no presumption in favour 
of the supernatural. There are some minds so con- 
structed that the very claim of the supernatural seems 
to involve a certain sacredness, and a presumption in 
its favour. But the Bible uses the supernatural spar- 
ingly, and in general makes plain the relation of cause 
and effect. We shall find, when we come to study 
the method of Jesus, that the love of the supernatural 
has its dangers ; it is well to remind ourselves at the 
outset that no alleged miracle at the present day can 
claim for itself any sanctity or escape any element of 
reasonable scrutiny because of its alleged miraculous 
character. 

*3 



14 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

In some heathen countries even the record of Bible 
miracles tends rather to hinder than to help in the 
conversion of the heathen. Our missionaries find them- 
selves quite unable to use them in their familiar place 
among the evidences of Christianity. The noble Brai- 
nerd, in his narrative of work among the American 
Indians, wrote : 

" When I have instructed them respecting the mir- 
acles wrought by Christ in healing the sick, etc., and 
mentioned them as evidences of His divine mission, 
they have quickly referred to the wonders wrought 
of that kind which one of their own diviners had per- 
formed by his magic charms, whence they had a high 
opinion of him and of his superstitious notions, which 
seemed to be a fatal obstruction to some of them in 
the way of their receiving the gospel/ ' 

Doctor Buckley reminds us that this same diviner 
was converted under the preaching of Brainerd, being 
influenced by the truth which he taught and the holy 
life which he lived. 1 To these tests must be the final 
appeal. In countries where the miraculous is associated 
so hopelessly with superstition that its use, if available, 
could only hinder the progress of truth, medical mis- 
sions, healing in the name of the Lord, are spreading 
the gospel, both in its essence and in its spirit. 

The final test of truth can never be the apparent 
attestation of what appears to be the supernatural. 
The last appeal is ever to the reason and the conscience 

1 " Faith Healing, Christian Science, and Kindred Phenomena," by 
J. M. Buckley, p. 47. 



THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL. I 5 

of men. Far back in the Old Testament times men 
were warned against following a new religion simply 
because it was accompanied by signs and wonders : 

" If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, 
and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder 
come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after 
other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; 
thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that 
dreamer of dreams : for the Lord your God proveth you, to know 
whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with 
all your soul. Ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear 
Him, and keep His commandments, and obey His voice, and ye 
shall serve Him, and cleave unto Him." (Deut. xiii. 1-4.) 

If we were for ever committing our faith to that 
which comes to us with an air of mystery, we should 
have before us a perpetual phantom chase. Even though 
signs and wonders are shown, even though prophecies 
are made and fulfilled, the final test is the value of the 
revelation to the lives of men. If a man is tied with 
ropes and shut into a cabinet and the lights are turned 
down, and strange things occur, the final question is 
not whether I can explain his loosening of the knots, 
but whether the revelation made in the dark is of real 
value to the assembled audience. If a pencil is put 
within a folded slate, and, later, writing is found within, 
the final question is not whether I can explain the 
means by which the writing has been accomplished, 
but whether the alleged revelation has really added 
to the sum of human knowledge. If a man establishes 
a new religion and works cures, it is not necessary 



1 6 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

to prove that all who are alleged to have been helped 
by him grow sick again, but only to inquire whether 
any new principle has been discovered which makes for 
the permanent advantage of men and women. Between 
the false and the true, the pretender and the real bearer 
of a message from God, we must discern, not by a 
comparison of wonders which make the curious gaze, 
but by evidences of sincerity, unselfishness, and good- 
ness. The working of cures can never attest as divine 
an alleged revelation accompanied by vulgarity, cupidity, 
and pretence. 

Besides being a most uncertain proof of the divinity 
of the faith which it proclaims, the supernatural, so 
called, has other serious disadvantages. It tends to 
disturb faith in the goodness of the established order 
of things. It sets us to looking for God in His unusual 
manifestations, and to ignoring an " earth crammed 
with heaven, and every common bush afire with God. ,, 
It discounts God's habitual methods, and enhances 
unduly those which are exceptional. It tends to divert 
men's minds from the real essence of the divine revela- 
tion, and to fix their attention upon the accessories 
thereof. It creates a morbid craving for more of the 
mysterious, and so for ever stimulates what it cannot 
satisfy, an appetite for the marvellous and the abnormal. 
It creates new and false tests of truth, and refuses to 
accept truth except as it becomes more or less myste- 
rious and unnatural. It sets a wicked and adulterous 
generation to seeking signs and wonders, which seeking 
they substitute for a search after righteousness. 



III. Christ's Miracles of Healing. 

Jesus had no fondness for being known merely as a 
worker of miracles. He preferred to attest His power 
and truth by moral and spiritual evidences rather than 
by those which bred in the people a desire for the unu- 
sual. That such a desire speedily grows abnormal, He 
well knew, and to that fact His experience adds new 
evidence. More than once He manifested great reluc- 
tance to work miracles, and repeatedly He forbade the 
knowledge that He had done so to be published. Jesus 
wanted men to believe the truth because of its self- 
eviden cing power ; miracles, largely, had power over 
those minds that were incapable of higher spiritual 
discernment. " Believe Me that I am in the Father 
and the Father in Me/' He said ; and then, lest this 
should be too much for them, He added, " Or else 
believe Me for the very works' sake." The super- 
natural was the resort of every charlatan and fraud ; 
Jesus made His appeal to the heart and conscience. 
Jesus was reluctant to have men think it their duty to 
believe because of His power to reward or punish them ; 
He would have them believe because of their love of 
truth and goodness. He shrank from seeming to bribe 
them to be good by means of his miracles, and pre- 
ferred that men should hear His truth, and see His life, 
and believe in God who had sent Him. 

17 



1 8 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

" Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not 
believe," said Jesus, reproachfully. What was even 
worse, they would not believe after they had seen 
them, as He Himself knew. "If they believe not 
Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe 
though one rose from the dead." The miraculous as 
a means of conversion was a conspicuous failure in 
Christ's day. He did not rely upon it. He rebuked 
the craving for it. He taught men to believe in truth 
and goodness, and not to demand those exhibitions 
which in false teachers so readily become mere feats 
of fortune-telling and legerdemain. It is better for 
a man to believe through a miracle than not to believe 
at all ; but " Blessed are those who have not seen, and 
yet have believed." Blessed are those to whom God 
is real, not in the unusual only, but in all the normal 
exhibitions of His righteous and inviolable laws. 

I have great patience with men who find it difficult 
to believe in miracles. In so far as Christianity has 
miracles, they are a means to an end, which end is faith 
in Christ. If that end be attained without them, the 
miracles need impose no added burden. The moment 
they impede faith, they may be allowed to stand aside 
for the help of those to whom they are of real assist- 
ance, while those souls that do not find help in them 
find God through such agencies as He uses for their 
assistance and enlightenment. The man who derives 
no help from miracles will not, if he is wise, deny them ; 
to other souls they have their meaning. But he need 
not wait to find God through the means which Christ 



CHRIST'S MIRACLES OF HEALING. 1 9 

counted of lesser importance, if God has made Himself 
plain through means that appeal to him as more truly 
spiritual. 

Men often use their belief in miracles unwarrantably ; 
first attempting to prove the miracles by revelation, 
and then to support their belief in the revelation by 
the miracle. This must not be. A man cannot say, 
" I believe the Bible because its writers wrought 
miracles to prove their divine authority, and I believe 
in miracles because the Bible records them." He must 
choose whether his faith in the miracles shall rest on 
the Bible, or his faith in the Bible shall rest upon 
miracles, — he cannot elect both without leaving both 
without foundation. Whichever he chooses to believe, 
it will be better in the long run for his faith, if he ac- 
cepts as final no proof of a revelation that in the last 
analysis is not moral. Prophecies fail, tongues cease, 
and the argument from miracles changes ; but faith and 
love and hope abide, and that religion is most truly 
from God, which gives most of the things that last. 

Miracles have still their evidential value to us, and to 
the greatest of them, the resurrection of Christ, Chris- 
tianity itself affords nineteen centuries of unbroken 
testimony. This is the only miracle which the modern 
Christian need trouble himself to prove. So far as the 
others are important, they follow readily from this. 
Some miracles were less important than others when 
they were wrought, and some had a greater impressive- 
ness and value to their own age than they can possibly 
have to a later time. He who believes that Jesus Christ 



20 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

rose again from the dead, and that He lives still in the 
life of heaven and of the world, need not trouble him- 
self because some of the other miracles give him diffi- 
culty. Nevertheless, one has only to compare the 
miracles recorded of Christ with the apocryphal mira- 
cles and the alleged miracles of other religions, to be 
struck at once with the contrast. The miracles of 
Christ form a cycle attesting His power over natural 
and spiritual forces. They are full of dignity and maj- 
esty and strength. They appeal not to men's love of 
the marvellous, but to their spiritual nature. They 
exhibit a sympathy and a self-control which are the 
perfection of the human and the Divine. They are 
free from all ostentation and pretence. They are free 
from all timidity on the one hand, and from all striving 
after effect on the other. They are free from all appeal 
to superstition and from self-advertising. They are free 
from all grotesqueness and from all pandering to vulgar 
curiosity. They are full of a grace which belongs to no 
other prophet or religious teacher. They are full of a 
conscious power which never shrank from the extremity 
of human need, and never exceeded by any effort at dis- 
play the occasion which evoked them. They are simple, 
beautiful, and convincing. They were done in the day- 
light. Their motive was transparent, and their result 
was immediate and easily tangible to the senses. They 
are ever for moral or spiritual ends, and exhibit beauti- 
fully and helpfully the power of God in its various 
moral relations. They are appropriate, masterful, and 
worthy of the Son of God. 



CHRIST'S MIRACLES OF HEALING. 21 

It is the regular method of the impostor to make his 
claim at the outset, and work his wonders to prove it. 
Christ wrought very differently. There are but two 
recorded miracles in the first year of His ministry, and 
one of these is near the end of it. 1 It was distasteful 
to Him to make the power of God a thing to be exhib- 
ited, chased after, stared at, and gossiped about. The 
temptation to use miracles for the display of his power, 
He met and conquered in the wilderness. He did not 
begin His work with a claim to be the Messiah, and 
proceed to establish that claim by the exhibition of 
superhuman strength. He began by preaching the 
good tidings of the approach of the kingdom of God, 
veiling His power, keeping it in the background, using 
it sparingly, often reluctantly, and only when there was 
special occasion. 

Still, He who claimed to be the Son of God must 
give reasonable evidence, not only of goodness, but of 
power, and of that power manifest for moral ends. So 
Jesus wrought from time to time such works as were 
necessary to impress His own age with a conviction 
that He had come from God. He proved that He had 
power over nature, power over sickness and sin and all 
the forces of evil, and power over the hearts and lives 
of men. Largely, His miracles were works of healing, 

1 Jesus was probably baptised in January, A. D. 27, and wrought His 
first miracle at Cana near the end of March in that year, returning to 
Jerusalem for the Passover, April n-17. It was probably in January, 
a. d. 28, that He healed the nobleman's son, His second recorded 
miracle. (John ii. 1-10 ; iv. 46-54.) 



22 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

for of such there was pressing need. It may be that a 
mere arithmetical comparison does not give us in right 
proportion His own thought of the legitimate objects 
for display of Divine power. It may be that He would 
have preferred a larger proportion of other manifesta- 
tions of the Divine nature. He could not escape from 
men's infirmities, and so He healed and comforted. 
But His first miracle was wrought to add to human 
pleasure ; ' the one miracle recorded by all four evan- 
gelists was not of healing but of feeding ; 2 the miracle 
by which He brought His disciples to Him, and by 
which He defined their future work as His followers, 
was to profit them in their regular method of getting a 
living ; 3 and the only one by which in part He sought 
to help Himself was wrought to pay the tax collector. 4 
God's power is for life's normal functions, and not 
wholly for its remedial necessities. 

It is entirely possible, therefore, that our study of 
Christ's miracles has led us to think too much, rela- 
tively, of those of healing, because of their mere numer- 
ical preponderance. We may err in supposing God's 
work to be remedial rather than constructive. It may 
be that in God's thought the remedial is the incidental, 
and constructive is the essential, in the mission of 
Christ. It may well be that the mission of Christ 
to men concerns, more definitely than we sometimes 
think, their accustomed vocations, their daily problems, 
and even their normal recreations and pleasures. 

1 John ii. i-ii. 2 Matt. xiv. 19-20; Mark vi. 35-44; Luke ix. 12- 
17; John vi. 5-13. 3 Luke v. 1-11. 4 Matt. xvii. 24-27. 



CHRIST'S MIRACLES OF HEALING. 2$ 

But Christ was constantly pressed upon by the 
world's necessities. The unending groan of pain, that 
from the dawn of history has been wrung from the 
heart of this sad earth, smote ever on His sympathetic 
ear. What works He might have wrought in a world 
with less stern necessities, we may perhaps debate, but 
it was a world of pain and sorrow, a world with little 
skill in healing, a world with great ignorance of the 
laws of health, into which He came. He went about 
doing good, and He did the good that was most needed, 
whether its specific form best represented His mission 
or not. When the leper cried, "Lord, if Thou wilt, 
Thou canst make me clean," He did not stop to ask 
whether He was healing lepers out of proportion to 
their number, — He healed the man before Him. So, 
teaching and healing, He lived His wonderful life. 
Men's bodily needs and men's spiritual needs, He met 
them both. Upon His own loving, generous heart 
He took the burden of the world's sickness and sin. 
" Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses." 



IV. Various Modern Systems. 

It has been my good fortune to see something of 
mental healing in its various forms. In seven years' 
residence in the South, I saw something of attempts at 
cure by incantations, charms, and the various supersti- 
tious practices of witch-doctors. If the cures following 
these processes are to be explained wholly as coinci- 
dences, the explanation must be stretched to cover a 
somewhat wide variety and number of cases. 

While in the mountains of Kentucky, I attended 
some of the tent meetings of Rev. George O. Barnes, 
and saw him anoint scores, probably hundreds, of people 
for bodily healing. The sick were brought from miles 
around. I saw men come in lame, and walk out with- 
out limping. I heard the testimony of deaf men who 
were wakened next morning by the crowing of the 
fowls. 

I had some opportunity of seeing the work of Mor- 
mon missionaries, and of hearing of the cures which 
they were said to perform. Later, I had occasion to 
attend certain gatherings of Spiritualists, and have wit- 
nessed there some similar phenomena. During a half- 
dozen years in Boston, I saw much of the Christian 
Scientists, and knew many excellent people among 
them. After Mrs. Eddy ceased as pastor of the First 
Christian Science Church, her successor, at a time 

24 



VARIOUS MODERN SYSTEMS. 2$ 

when Christian Science churches had pastors, was a 
former pastor of my own, and a man of undoubted 
character. From time to time I had quite sufficient 
opportunity of learning of the principles and the alleged 
cures of Christian Scientists. 

Christian Science has had and is having a large 
following. Philosophically it is a heresy whose hope 
is in the fact that its error is largely self-limiting ; but 
its success has been great because it tells one needed 
truth. We ought to learn to talk and think, not of 
whatsoever things give us headache or backache, and 
of our symptoms favourable and the reverse. We ought 
not to pollute the sunlight with our complaints and our 
whimperings, but rather think of the things that are 
true, and honest, and just, and pure, and lovely, and of 
good report. And this will affect not our minds only 
but our bodies. That is a truth which is both Chris- 
tian and scientific. Christian Science is not at all 
inconsistent with Christian character, and those who 
hold it in a Christian spirit ought to be considered 
and treated as Christian brethren. As a system, how- 
ever, it deserves just so much of consideration as it 
evidences of solid truth. It cannot stand permanently, 
but will pass away, as did the Gnosticism whose error 
it has revived in its impossible denial of matter. 

Christian Science, so called, is a religion, a system 
of philosophy, and a method of mental therapeutics. 
As a religion we do not know what it is to be, and can- 
not determine until after the death of Mrs. Eddy, whose 
decease will affect it in one of two ways, and probably 



26 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

will enlarge considerably its system of doctrine. As a 
philosophy it is open to investigation, and capable of 
intelligent discussion by any one who can follow Mrs. 
Eddy's somewhat remarkable logic ; if the task weary 
him, he can neither stand nor sit, for there is supposed 
to be no matter for him to rest upon, nor will the 
premises of the system afford him much more substan- 
tial ground. As a system of mental therapeutics it 
deserves respect in proportion to the reality of its cures, 
which are much like the cures of other mental systems, 
both in the kind wrought and those which it is unable 
to perform. 

Mrs. Eddy has recently settled a vexed question for 
her followers, and settled it shrewdly and wisely. 

" Rather than quarrel over vaccination, I recommend that, if 
the law deemed an individual to submit to this process, he obey 
the law, and then appeal to the gospel to save him from bad 
physical results. . . . We may safely submit to the providence of 
God, to common justice, to the maintenance of individual rights, 
and to governmental usages. This statement should be so inter- 
preted as to apply, on the basis of Christian Science, to the re- 
porting of a contagious case to the proper authorities when the 
law so requires." (Christian Science Journal, April, 1901.) 

This is a very wise move, and will relieve a good 
many healers from a dilemma. Nor can it be called 
inconsistent ; for if Christian Science can save a man 
from smallpox, surely it can save him from vaccination. 
Moreover, it will always now be uncertain how much 
good or harm he gets from each ; if the case goes well, 
it will be presumably because Christian Science has 



VARIOUS MODERN SYSTEMS. 2J 

saved him from the logical bad effects of vaccination ; 
if it goes ill, it is probably because Christian Science 
was interfered with. But, if there is no disease, no 
pain, no matter, how is a healer ever to know what 
to report ? And is he to admit that a man has diph- 
theria, scarlet fever or mumps, when there is and can 
be no such thing ? This will surely be a difficulty, but, 
nevertheless, Mrs. Eddy has done a wise thing, and one 
that will enable Christian Science to get all the credit 
justly due it, even in cases where the misguided sup- 
pose that vaccination has done its part of good. 

Something of what Christian Science can and cannot 
do may be illustrated by the following incident from a 
Boston "healer," published in the Christian Science 
Journal for Dec. 27, 1900: 

"About eight years ago I was called to a country town in 
Missouri to attend the case of a small child. One morning, when 
taking a stroll over the farm with the owner, a revolver was 
prematurely discharged when taking it out of my pocket. I felt 
a queer sensation in my thigh, but denied it at once and repeated 
the Scientific Statement of Being. Upon examination, it was 
found that the ball had entered the thigh, but had not passed 
entirely through, lodging about half an inch from the other side. 
I asked the friend with whom I was staying to cut the ball out, 
but could not persuade him to do it. He said he knew of an old 
army surgeon, some five miles from there, and if I could stand it 
to ride that distance he would at once hitch up and take me. I 
replied that I could stand it, as I was feeling all right. On the 
way over I was often asked if it hurt much, and as I always 
replied in the negative my friend would say, ' That is funny.' 
Finally we arrived and had the surgeon extract the ball. After 
cutting, it out he remarked, < What are you made of ? You did 
not make a groan, and the flesh didn't even quiver when the knife 



28 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

was used. I cannot understand it.' I looked at him a moment 
and smiled. He said, ' You had better come back to-morrow and 
let me dress the wound.' I said, ' Thank you ; but I will take 
care of that all right.' While paying him, he remarked, ' You 
puzzle me, but I believe you must be one of those Christian 
Scientists that are going the rounds here and curing people.' I 
replied that I was. I rode over the rough roads back to the 
farm, feeling no discomfort whatever. I attended to all my duties 
and felt no pain. In three days all was as if the accident had 
never occurred, and has remained so to this day. Surely Truth 
and Love are our only support." 

This is a case that lends itself very well to such 
criticism as sympathy forbids in many of the published 
statements. Where people have suffered long and have 
found any measure of relief through Christian Science, 
it is an ungracious task to inquire whether they are 
really as much better as they believe, and whether a 
like benefit might have come in another way. But this 
is the case of a professional healer, and his cure sug- 
gests on the surface that, the ball being removed, he 
had a good recovery, such as another man with equally 
good health and nerves might have had from a flesh 
wound no more serious. The "Scientific Statement 
of Being " which he repeated would seem to be the 
proper thing to use for such a case. It has since been 
ordered as a uniform part of the worship of Christian 
Science churches, by Mrs. Eddy's request, in the April, 
190 1, number of the' Christian Science Journal. "From 
this date," she says, "all the Churches of Christ 
Scientists are requested to read at the close of service, 
and before benediction/ ' together with "the correlative 



VARIOUS MODERN SYSTEMS. 29 

Scripture according to 1 John 3 : 1, 2, 3," the following 
declaration of faith : 

" There is no life, intelligence, or substance in matter. 
All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for 
God is All in all. Spirit is immortal Truth ; matter is 
mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal ; matter 
is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man 
is His image and likeness ; hence, man is spiritual and 
not material." 

If man is spiritual and not material, out of what did 
the old army surgeon cut the bullet — out of Infinite 
Mind ? If it was possible to overcome the pain of the 
bullet- wound by denying it, why was it not possible to 
overcome the matter in the bullet by denying it ? With 
what did immaterial mind shoot itself, if "there is no 
substance in matter ? " Why should a healer, who 
knows that there is no substance in matter, need or 
desire to shoot anything but Mind out of the muzzle 
of a revolver ? And, being himself shot by a " mortal 
error," falsely represented to the senses as a bullet, 
why did he not treat himself wholly by Christian 
Science ? Why not take two X-ray photographs, one 
showing where the bullet is during the prevalence of 
the "error," and the other, three days later, showing 
how, without surgery, the bullet has been changed to 
Truth or Mind ? It is thus that Christian Science trips 
glibly over trivial little inconsistencies. Its dentists 
still apply Christian Science to their work, but fill teeth 
with error, alias gold and amalgam, and drill holes in 
Mind where there exists the error of a cavity, and write 



30 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

their glowing testimonials of the benefit which they 
derive from it. Doubtless the benefit is more or less 
real ; but if the theory is right, how can any Christian 
Scientist be a dentist, and extract decayed molar errors, 
and fill up erroneous cavities ? Indeed, if the theory is 
right, and the " Scientific Statement of Being " is the 
coming creed of men, just what can a man do? what 
can he buy or sell ? in what shall he live and with what 
attire himself ? and on what shall he stand or sit, there 
being no substance in matter, but only infinite Mind ? 

I have gone several times to see men of note who 
work cures by mental methods, and without religious 
claims. Some of these were charlatans, but others, as 
I believe, sincere and honest men, really helping a large 
proportion of the cases that come to them. I have seen 
canes and crutches discarded, surgical appliances laid 
aside, and in some cases the cures which physicians had 
failed to procure, apparently brought about. 

Of one or two other experiences, I shall speak more 
at length, and shall indicate in the proper place some 
thought of mine concerning them. I believe that all of 
them can show a percentage of apparent cures. 

If, therefore, I object to such terms as divine healing, 
it is not because I dispute the fact, but because I do 
not recognise the limitation which the name implies. 
Health is wholeness, logically and etymologically, and 
wholeness is holiness, and wholeness and holiness and 
health are from God. All healing is divine healing, 
though the means employed are often far from the 
divine ideal. 



VARIOUS MODERN SYSTEMS. 3 I 

We are learning better than we once knew, that the 
mind has an intimate relation to the body, and an influ- 
ence over its conditions. The relation of the physical 
and the spiritual is still shrouded in mystery, but some 
of the governing conditions of that relation are more 
clearly seen. That the prayer of faith can save the 
sick in many instances has been proved by a lengthen- 
ing list of cases in these present days. At the same 
time, a multitude of systems which employ mental ther- 
apeutics, and which have a surprising success in a certain 
class or in classes of diseases, should be regarded as 
giving the doctrine of faith-cure a certain scientific 
basis. Nor need the believer in divine healing, so- 
called, regret to acknowledge that his cures can be 
duplicated by the so-called Christian Scientist, nor the 
Christian Scientist dispute that his cures can be paral- 
lelled by those who employ other methods of mental 
healing, some of them claiming no religious basis, and 
by others possessing a religious basis which does not 
command the respect of intelligence. These cures have 
equal scientific value, and I think I shall not be mis- 
understood if I add, equal religious value. For they all 
show how rational it is to expect physical benefit to 
result from a sound mental and spiritual condition ; and 
that condition Christianity ought to furnish. Prayer 
and faith are curative agents of the first value, even as 
judged apart from supernatural influence ; and I do not, 
by any means, limit the power of God in answer to 
prayer to those effects of which we are able to determine 
the natural causes. 



32 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

Faith-healing is not a new thing in the Christian 
Church. Some once eminently respectable forms of it 
have obtained wide acceptance and have passed away as 
historic superstitions. 

Down to the time of Queen Anne, the English 
prayer-book contained a form to be used when the king 
touched people afflicted with scrofula. " King's evil," 
the disease was called, from the current belief that the 
touch of a king would cure it. That the touch did not 
always heal is evidenced by the case of Dr. Samuel 
Johnson, who, as a child of three, was taken to London 
and touched by Queen Anne ; that healing or improve- 
ment often followed the touch of the royal hand must 
be admitted by any one who realises how widespread 
was the belief in its efficacy. Charles II. touched as 
many as one hundred thousand afflicted persons. When 
William III. came to the throne, and refused to touch 
people who had scrofula, the Jacobites counted his 
refusal as proof that he was not a legitimate monarch, 
and so feared the test ; parents of diseased children 
wept and protested against his heartlessness ; and high 
churchmen denounced him a pagan or a Puritan. The 
proof that cures followed these touches is quite as con- 
vincing as that of any of our modern faith-cure claim- 
ants. Indeed, it soon was found that a king's right to 
the throne could not be determined by the efficacy of 
his touch, as a contemporary historian informs us, 
"Whether our kings were of York or Lancaster, they 
did cure for the most part." 



V. Roman Catholic Cures. 

It would be very easy to multiply instances of cures 
wrought, or alleged to have been wrought, through 
Roman Catholic superstitions on this side the water. 
The evidence is of the same kind, and is fully as strong 
and consistent and reliable as that adduced to prove 
other faith-cures. For instance, here is a clipping from 
a New York paper, in which the circumstances of the 
care and the inventory of the relics seem to imply 
a somewhat careful newspaper investigation : 

" Michael B. McCarty has for some months been an object of 
wonder to medical men. He has been breathing at a rate of over 
one hundred and forty times per minute, and his efforts at respira- 
tion have been so violent that he has reminded those who heard 
him of a locomotive struggling up a heavy grade. The leading 
physicians of several cities tried to find out what was the matter 
with the man, but were utterly unable to explain his malady, or in 
any way to relieve it. A few days ago Michael said he could be 
cured if he could touch sacred relics. He called on Father Tom 
Adams, of Brooklyn, who was suspended by Bishop McLaughlin, 
for giving too much of his time to the curing of sick through the 
medium of certain relics in his possession. 

" Father Adams stripped McCarty and rubbed him with relics 
of the Saviour and the saints. He told McCarty to have faith 
and he would be healed. McCarty believed, and his awful breath- 
ing quieted to the normal state. McCarty is absolutely cured of 
his terrible affliction. Doctors say that if he had shown as much 
will to get well under their hands as he did under the priest's 

33 



34 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

treatment, his recovery would have been as certain. They see 
nothing of the miraculous in this faith-cure. 

" The following is a list of Father Adams's relics that are said to 
be miraculous in their power to heal the sick : 

" Particles of flesh of St. Francis of Assisi. 

" Particles of garments of St. Julia, the virgin martyr. 

" Earth and coffin wood from the grave of St. Teresa, Alva, 
Spain. 

" Particles from the coat of St. Joseph. 

"A part of the coffin of St. Margaret Mary, of Alaquoque, 
France, the founder of the Order of Devotion of the Sacred 
Heart of Jesus. 

11 Particles from the urn of St. Aloysius Gonzaga. 

" Particles from the grave of Virgin Mary. 

" A small statuette of St. Teresa, made from the earth of her 
grave. 

" Piece of stone from the tomb of Christ. 

" Portion of the crib in which Christ was placed in the stable 
at Bethlehem. 

" Part of garments worn by St. Alfonso Signara. 

" Father Adams has what appears to be proofs of authenticity 
of these relics in documents yellow with age, signed by Roman 
cardinals and containing the papal seal. Father Adams cites 
Holy Writ as his authority for the use of relics." 

Another clipping may be reprinted here, this one 
from the Catholic Republic of Boston. It is worth read- 
ing because of the number and variety of cures it records. 

" A despatch from Ottawa, Ont, dated July 22d, says, An 
additional number of miraculous cures are reported as having 
taken place at the shrine of St. Anne de Beaupre in connection 
with a pilgrimage recently organised by Abbe Lesage. The first 
case is that of Miss Hogue, a young French-Canadian lady, who 
was so weak and crippled that it was with difficulty that she could 
walk with crutches. She accompanied the pilgrimage to St. 
Anne, and, while partaking of communion, she suddenly felt her 



ROMAN CATHOLIC CURES. 35 

strength return, and she threw away her crutches. The second 
case was that of Marie Louise Larin, a French-Canadian woman, 
thirty-three years old, who was for twelve years paralysed so that 
she was not able to leave her room. So bad was she that she re- 
ceived the last rites of the Church shortly before the pilgrimage. 
When the latter started out she was carried on board the steamer 
Three Rivers in an easy chair. She could move neither head nor 
foot, and was in a dying condition. On the arrival of the pilgrim- 
age at St. Anne she was carried into the sanctuary, where the 
holy communion was administered to her. All at once she arose, 
refused the proffered aid of her friends, and walked through the 
church with a firm step, to the wonder of the pilgrims, who cried 
out at the remarkable miracle. To-day she is in perfect health. 
' At the communion,' she said, ' it seemed to me that the good St. 
Anne looked at me, and said : " Walk, Louise Larin." ' A girl of 
fourteen years, who was afflicted with blindness, the result of a 
severe attack of smallpox, was cured at the same time. Madam 
Periault, of He Perrot, near Montreal, who was afflicted with lame- 
ness, and had one leg two inches shorter than the other, had the 
limb perfectly restored." 

Any Protestant who cares to inform himself will find 
the number of these Roman Catholic shrines consider- 
able, and while they flourish best where people read and 
think less than in America, they are not lacking here. 
The Congregationalist of April 5, 1901, calls attention 
to two such shrines in Boston. 

" Attention has lately been called to the existence of two shrines 
in Boston, to which multitudes of Roman Catholics are constantly 
resorting, seeking to be cured of sickness and other ills to which 
flesh is heir. One is in the church of St. Leonard of Port Morris, 
supported by the Franciscan Fathers on Prince Street, in the 
North End, where every Tuesday afternoon special prayers are 
said to St. Anthony, before whose statue many miraculous cures 
are affirmed to take place. Although the church is usually at- 



36 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH, 

tended by Italians to the exclusion of others, these weekly adora- 
tions of St. Anthony bring crowds of English-speaking Catholics 
from all parts of the city and its suburbs, so that the English 
language, spoken with a strong Italian accent, is used by Father 
Ubaldus in his service on those occasions. 

" Of still greater repute is the shrine of Our Lady of the Per- 
petual Help, in the Redemptorist Church in Roxbury, where a 
monumental pile of discarded crutches bears witness to the cures 
there accomplished. A painting of the Virgin, said to be of thir- 
teenth century origin, represents the worker of these wonders, 
whose aid is sought by believers flocking hither from all over New 
England and points even more remote." 

It further appears that relics in the hands of a devout 
Roman Catholic can serve uses which a Protestant can 
hardly expect to parallel. The Outlook of April 5, 
1 90 1, shows how in Montreal relics that are good for 
the cure of disease may be used also to suppress a fire. 
The captain of Montreal's fire company, No. 14, evi- 
dently believes in the value of such relics. Doubtless 
they gave him and his Roman Catholic firemen and the 
people who assisted them courage for better service, 
and hence may deserve classification under the general 
head of faith-cures, for few even of the most ardent 
faith-curists will acknowledge the value of such a use 
of curative agents apart from their effect on the minds 
of those who use them. 

" A Canadian correspondent sends us clippings from the Mon- 
treal Herald about a curious incident connected with a recent fire 
in that city. The Herald first quoted its story from La Patrie, 
a French paper, which related the miraculous occurrence with 
gravity and sincerity (but, as it turns out, quite inaccurately), 
under the head ' Supernatural Protection.' The fire in question 



ROMAN CATHOLIC CURES. 37 

was in buildings near to Notre Dame Church, and fears arose lest 
the sacred edifice itself should be destroyed. The exact facts the 
Herald found, after investigation, were as follows : 

" The Sisters of the Congregation, 40 St. Jean Baptiste, saw 
the fire, and retired to the little chapel to pray for the safety of 
the district. A relic of Ste. Amable, consisting of a ribbon the 
saint had worn, was hung upon the wall by the altar. Ste. Amable 
has for centuries been looked upon as the protectress in heaven 
against fire. When large districts have been menaced by a 
conflagration, prayers have been said to Ste. Amable, and her 
assistance asked in staying the progress of the flames. With 
greater confidence, therefore, the sister superior took a small 
piece of the holy ribbon, which had been given the sisters by 
Mgr. Bruchesi, and, giving it to a messenger, told him to deliver 
it to a fireman and have it thrown into the flames. The messen- 
ger took the relic and hurried on his mission, while the nuns 
continued to pray before the altar. The relic was given to Cap- 
tain Renaud, of No. 14 Station, who, with great reverence and 
confidence, climbed to the top of a ladder and deposited it in the 
flames raging in the top story of the Hudon Hebert & Company's 
building. The nuns this morning told a Herald reporter that 
many fires had been stopped through prayers to Ste. Amable. 
They believed that on Saturday the flames were extinguished 
very easily after the relic was deposited in the burning building. 
Captain Renaud said, when asked about the circumstance: 
1 Everybody has his own opinion in matters of this kind.' < Do 
you believe the relic had any effect on the flames ? ' ' Yes, I 
think the fire went out almost immediately afterward.' " 

Among the multitudes of miracles alleged to have 
been wrought at Roman Catholic shrines, those of Our 
Lady of Lourdes stand prominent, and are of the present 
time. Lourdes, in the south of France, has a grotto 
where, in 1858, a peasant girl believed herself to see 
the Virgin Mary. From that time on such wonderful 
cures occurred in this place that a large church was 



38 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

built there in 1876, and consecrated in the presence of 
thirty-five cardinals and other high ecclesiastical digni- 
taries. To this place pilgrims throng by scores of 
thousands, and the water from the grotto is sold in 
great quantities. That very many people are healed is 
unquestionable, and the list of cures is remarkable. 
While the diseases most frequently cured are those 
affected in marked degree by the nervous system, the 
variety is great. Running ulcers, paralysed hands, 
drawn-up limbs, and a half-destroyed eye are among 
the alleged recoveries. These cures are attested by 
quite as good evidence as that which is adduced in favour 
of any of our Protestant systems of mental or spiritual 
healing. 



VI. A Protestant's Explanation. 

Cases such as these, with cures so undeniable, afford 
a hard problem for the Protestant who has a system of 
his own to defend, and believes it essentially different 
from this of the Catholics. Rev. A. B. Simpson, 
founder of the Christian Alliance, has undertaken to 
explain it, and in these words : 

" Where there is a simple and genuine faith in a Romanist, — 
and we have found it in some, — God will honour it as well as in 
a Protestant. . . . But when, on the other hand, they are cor- 
rupted by the errors of their Church, and exercising faith, not in 
God, but in the relics of superstition, or the image of the Virgin, 
we see no difference between the Romanist and the Spiritualist, 
and we should not wonder at all if the devil should be permitted 
to work his lying wonders for them, as he does for the superstitious 
pagan or possessed medium." 

Doctor Simpson's distinction will not stand as a 
scientific explanation. Here are two Catholics, both 
more or less religious, both with enough of superstition 
to come to the grotto at Lourdes, and one with a little 
superstition to spare. The faith of one is in God 
rather than in the alleged revelation of the Virgin, 
though of course he also believes in that ; the other 
believes in this revelation, and beyond that point allows 
the Church to do his thinking. The difference in the 
two men's faith is a difference of proportion. Each 

39 



40 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

" has a simple and genuine faith," and each is affected, 
though in varying degrees, by "the errors of their 
Church." Both bow at the same altar ; both offer the 
same prayers ; both partake of the same water ; both 
go away healed of the same disease, and leave their 
crutches on the same pile. But if Doctor Simpson is 
right, God heals one and the devil the other. Some 
broader line of demarcation between the work of God 
and the work of the devil is needed for men at large. 
The apostles knew no such fine-spun distinctions. No 
system of faith-cure can permanently command belief 
in its superior excellence which acknowledges so close 
an approach to the work of Satan. The Son of God 
was manifest that he might destroy the works of the 
devil, not that he might establish a division of labour 
for the effecting of ends practically identical. 

I quite dissent from the foregoing theory. All heal- 
ing is from God. We cannot be safe in assigning 
alternately to God and the devil results that any reason- 
able classification must account similar. If " the super- 
stitious pagan, the possessed medium, and the Romanist, 
corrupted by the errors of his Church/' cast out devils 
by Beelzebub, and Doctor Simpson does the same by 
the finger of God, Satan is divided against himself, and 
our ability to know a tree by its fruits is at an end. 



VII. A Test Case. 

Some years ago I attended a large gathering of a 
devout body of good people, led by men whose names 
are familiar to Christians generally throughout the 
country. At this meeting a goodly number of people 
were prayed over and dismissed as healed. If I had 
any doubts about their cure, I should certainly have 
kept them to myself had not those in charge of the 
meeting repeatedly challenged any Christians present 
who did not accept the cures and the doctrines which 
accompanied them to rise and say so, or remain con- 
victed of doubting the power of Christ as thus mani- 
fested. Thus challenged, I rose, and addressed the 
minister in charge, who was prompted from time to 
time by two eminent exponents of divine healing with 
him in the pulpit. I asked this question : 

"What limit do you assign to your own power to 
work cures ? " 

"Oh, brother," was the reply, "your question shows 
utter inability to understand our position ! We work 
no cures. We are nothing, less than nothing ! It is 
the Lord Jesus Christ who heals men." 

I answered, " What limit, then, do you assign to 
the power of Christ to work cures through your 
ministry?" 

"We assign no limit," was the reply. "All power 

41 



42 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

is his, in heaven and on earth. He is the same yes- 
terday, to-day, and for ever. ,, 

"Then why," I asked, "are your cures the same in 
kind as those of Christian Scientists, Mormons, Spirit- 
ualists, mental healers, and the rest ? Does Christ work 
through these people ? " 

" No, brother. And that shows how short-sighted 
the Church is to-day. It doesn't believe that God has 
as much power as the devil." 

"You mean that while Christ works cures through 
you, the devil works the same kind of cures through 
these others ? " 

" Certainly. Don't you remember, when Moses cast 
down his rod before Pharaoh, and it became a serpent, 
the magicians did the same with their enchantments?" 

"I do," said I, "and if I remember correctly, the 
serpent of Moses swallowed the serpent of the magi- 
cians. If, among all these forms of healing, yours alone 
is from God, I should like to see a larger serpent." 

" What do you propose, brother ? You have seen 
these people healed ; what more can you ask ? " 

" I have seen these people who profess to be healed," 
said I, " but I do not know how sick some of them were 
before, nor how well the rest are now. And I have 
seen people who gave like evidence of being healed, 
whose recovery, such as it was, came by those whom 
you say are helped by the devil. I should like to pro- 
pose a larger serpent. Among your members here is 
a minister, faithful and devout, who lost a leg in the 
Civil War. If I lack faith, he does not ; you know him 



A TEST CASE. 43 

and I know him as a true Christian man, and one in 
sympathy with your views. Every day while this 
meeting has been in progress, he has stumped up and 
down these aisles on a wooden leg. He is here now. 
I propose that you pray for the restoration of his lost 
leg." 

One of the seated brethren replied, "We have no 
record that our Lord ever restored a lost leg. ,, 

I answered, "Our Lord probably never saw a man 
who had lost a leg ; He lived before the day of cannon- 
balls and threshing-machines and modern surgery. Do 
you doubt that He could have done it ? Do you doubt 
that he would have done it ? If you wish to distinguish 
between his work and that of the devil, what better 
opportunity could you ask ?" 

But they declined to pray for my friend, who still 
wears his wooden leg into the pulpit. Instead, they 
referred me to the case of a man who had been healed 
that afternoon of cancer of the stomach. The man 
went home and died that night of hemorrhage induced 
by the excitement attending his cure. 

Of the three men on the platform that afternoon, two 
are more prominent than ever in work of that kind. I 
was in the city where the third resides some time ago, 
and was informed that he had become a Spiritualist 
medium, and as such is said to be working the same 
kind of cures, but these, though externally the same, 
must now, according to his former theory, be wrought 
by the devil. 



VIII. Other Forms of Mental Cure. 

The many forms of faith-healing or of mental-heal 
ing now practised by people of some intelligence insist 
strongly upon being known, each as different from the 
rest. There are marked differences between them, 
some making no religious claims whatever, some de- 
manding faith in a particular person, and some seeking 
to effect a cure by an elevation of thought and uplift of 
soul which may prepare for a divine blessing. Yet he 
would be a careless and superficial observer who did not 
discern more points in common in the objective results 
than there are differences in the definitions and forms 
of expression on the part of the different systems. And, 
not only are these cures much alike, but many of them 
can be parallelled by authentic instances of bodily relief 
resulting from strong and wholly unpremeditated mental 
stimulus. 

How many and how interesting are the cases of sud- 
den recovery from sickness. I know a lady who teaches 
in a boarding-school, far from her home. Some years 
ago she lay in bed with rheumatism, unable to move. 
One night the dormitory caught fire. This helpless 
woman, who is no hysterical pretender, rose to the oc- 
casion. She rushed from room to room getting the 
girls out of danger. She threw her belongings into her 
trunk, and bumped it down the stairs. She lifted one 

44 



OTHER FORMS OF MENTAL CURE. 45 

end of it into a wagon, and sat on it while driven to a 
farmhouse, where, after seeing the rest in bed, she her- 
self went sound asleep, and, in the excitement of the 
hour and her thought for others, never remembered until 
next morning that she had been sick when the fire broke 
out. When I saw her last she informed me that she 
has never had a twinge of rheumatism since that night. 
The extent to which the mind can influence the body, 
especially when the influence is attended by religious 
excitement, is manifested in the ancient oriental custom 
of fire-walking, whose origin is lost in antiquity, but 
which is still practised in India, Japan, and some of the 
South Sea islands. The performance consists in walk- 
ing barefoot over white-hot stones. Religious incanta- 
tions usually precede, and a feast follows this singular 
and well-authenticated custom. Dr. H. M. Hocken, 
who himself witnessed it, thus describes the ceremony 
as it occurred on one of the Fiji Islands : 

" Through the cooperation of civil officers and a steamship com- 
pany, the small clan on the island was persuaded to give an ex- 
hibition, and several whites, including Doctor Hocken, went to 
witness it. One of them, a government meteorologist, carried a 
thermometer which would register up to four hundred degrees 
Fahrenheit. 

" When the guests arrived they found hundreds of natives as- 
sembled. The oven was twenty-five or thirty feet long and eight 
feet broad, and was shaped like a saucer. The deepest part of 
the depression was fifteen feet in length. The preparations had 
been undertaken long enough in advance to avert any delay, and 
the visitors saw the stones still covered with embers, which were 
removed in their presence by means of long poles bearing loops 
of green withes. 



46 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

11 Walking beside the pit before this was done, the man with the 
thermometer recorded a temperature of one hundred and fourteen 
degrees. After the stones were uncovered he hung his instru- 
ment out over the centre of the oven, six feet above the stones, 
whereupon the mercury rose to two hundred and eighty-two de- 
grees. The solder was melting, and the instrument was likely to 
be ruined if left in that position longer. 

" What the temperature was on the stones themselves can only 
be conjectured. Doctor Hocken says that they were * white-hot,' 
and that low flames from small coals between the stones could be 
seen leaping up around them. 

" Two of the men who were to walk across the oven were ex- 
amined by Doctor Hocken before their daring act. They wore 
garlands about the neck and waist. Their feet and legs were en- 
tirely bare. The soles were soft and flexible, showing that they 
had not been rendered permanently callous in any way. 

"In order to detect the presence of chemicals which might have 
been applied for the occasion, Doctor Hocken did not hesitate to 
lick the natives' feet. But his scientific zeal availed nothing. 

" Finally, at a signal, the seven or eight natives who took part 
in the exhibition came down in single file to the oven, and walked 
across the stones from one end to the other of the pit. They 
spent less than half a minute there. 

" Immediately after they emerged, Doctor Hocken again in- 
spected their feet, but could find no sign of burning or blistering. 

" Several Englishmen have tried this experiment, one of them a 
British resident on one of the Society Islands. He says, * I felt 
something resembling slight electric shocks, and the tingling sen- 
sations continued for hours afterward, but that was all. The 
tender skin of my feet was not even hardened by fire.' 

" Yet the stones were so hot that an hour afterward green 
branches thrown on them caught fire and blazed up. 

" It is difficult to explain these phenomena. No theory worthy 
of scientific consideration has yet been proposed to account for 
them." 

The possible influence of a religious idea, even though 
superstitious, upon popular thought, especially in time 



OTHER FORMS OF MENTAL CURE. 47 

of popular excitement, finds illustration in an apparently 
authentic incident reported in the missionary papers a 
few years ago from Burmah. 

" A lady missionary, finding that the cholera was raging in a vil- 
lage which she visited, distributed a number of bottles of an ano- 
dyne among the people as a remedy. Returning some time after, 
she was assured that her treatment had done them so much good 
that they had accepted her God. She followed them with joy to 
their house of worship, where she found her medicine bottles set in 
order on a shelf, and the whole company prostrated themselves 
before them. The reasoning which had brought about their con- 
version was not so very different from an argument too commonly 
urged in Christian lands under the name of divine healing." 



IX. Absent Treatment. 

It has developed in these recent days, that where 
faith is sufficient, distance is no bar to cure, and this 
fact has opened a very profitable system of " absent 
treatment," by which long-distance healing is wrought 
through money-orders sent in one direction by mail, 
and health vibrations of one sort or another are sent in 
the other direction at the convenience of the healer, 
who has been known to send a bill that ran into three 
figures to the estate of a person who, nevertheless, died. 
It appears to average about as well as the other forms 
of healing, and is proving of value in other directions as 
well. The ease with which the principles of absent 
treatment can be administered to a variety of cases is 
illustrated in a paper before me, one of whose adjuncts 
provides for the procuring of success in business, 
through mental impulse, sent out freely for a dollar. 
Here is the standing notice at the head of this 
department : 

"TREATMENT FOR BUSINESS SUCCESS ONLY. 

" Daily I speak for each member of this Circle the Word of 
success. Any man or woman is eligible for membership who is 
engaged in business, or desires to be. Any woman who is a 
helpmeet to husband or son is partner in business and may 
join the Success Circle, either with or without the other's knowl- 
edge, and receive its benefits for both. One year's treatment and 

4 8 



ABSENT TREATMENT. 49 

the paper for a year for one dollar. For obtaining quickest 
and best results, read daily, night and morning, the monthly letter 
to the Success Circle, printed herewith. No special hour for re- 
ceiving the Word is necessary. It is with each member, and works 
night and day, feeling or no feeling, until it manifests that for 
which it is spoken.'' 

One reads on with some interest to find the " monthly 
letter," thus to be read morning and night as a sort of 
devotional service for revenue. The letter for March, 
1 90 1, which is to supply this sort of semi-diurnal spir- 
itual stimulus for success in business for thirty-one days 
reads as follows : 

" Bless your heart, dearie, you are doing better than I even 
hoped I Glory, hallelujah ! That's the ticket. Just you go in to 
WIN and keep at it and all you desire will grow for you. Never 
mind ups and downs — never mind other people's ups and downs. 
Let nothing draw off your stream of thought force from the things 
you are aiming for. Keep cool, keep sweet, and AIM. Get in- 
terested in aiming. Steady now, steady. Your nebulous desires 
are forming in answer to the Word — the Word is moving upon 
the face of the deeps of you and order is coming out of chaos. 
Your mind is quieting, steadying ; plans are condensing ; force is 
condensing. LET the Word work. Keep sweet. Never mind 
ups and downs — ALL things will work for the furtherance of 
your desires. Daily I speak for you the Word which grows for 
you all you desire, and grows desire too." 

Some people are getting their dollar's worth, appar- 
ently, out of this sort of thing. One woman, the 
daughter of a noted inventor, and wife of a prominent 
ex-minister, whose name is given unblushingly at the 
end of her printed letter, sends the following, which the 
editor, a woman, felt free to publish. I omit the name 



50 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

of paper, book, and writer, and I do not know that I 
care to comment on the letter, or the sort of quasi 
spiritual pabulum that evoked it : 

" Dear « — : Here's a great hug and kiss for you, to empha- 
sise my thanks for the Success Circle. The week after I joined 
I felt the result of your spoken Word. You vital, sweet woman ! 
From the first issue of your paper I have loved you. ... I have 
read your book, and consider it a remarkable book. The author 
sees far and clear ; the truth and power of many of his observa- 
tions made my consciousness leap ! . . . You say each thing that 
happens is calling out our forces into expression. My Goodness, 
how true that is ! Your faculty for saying just the right thing is 
astonishing. Not one stiff, automatic, meaningless idea ever fell 
from your pen. When Oliver Wendell Holmes said ' Nature is 
in earnest when she makes a woman,' he must have meant you. 
I wish I could tell you how I keenly appreciate you. I fairly eat 
up each number of your paper. Sometimes I sympathise with 
Charles Lamb. He was riding home from a dinner-party and said 
he could not * fully ■ express what a good time he had had, unless 
he hung his legs out the cab window. As I never ride home in 
cabs, I shall send you my picture by way of substitute. Continue 
the Word. Some day you shall be proud of your work." 



X. The Resemblances and Differences in 
These Systems. 

Does it follow, then, that there is no difference be- 
tween these various methods of faith cure ? By no 
means. The difference is vast, so vast that some of 
them are utterly impossible to an intelligent and rev- 
erent man. The difference between the cures which 
result from superstitions and those which result from 
faith, are twofold, subjective and objective. The sub- 
jective difference is, that the higher the object toward 
whom faith is exercised, the more exalted will be their 
faith. The objective difference is, that God is able to 
work for men, both mentally and physically, not in pro- 
portion to His own power alone, but in proportion to 
the intelligence, sincerity, open-heartedness, and spiri- 
tual elevation of the believer. 

It is a pity that Christian people, when sick, avail 
themselves so little of the physical and spiritual benefits 
of prayer. In too many Christian homes there is no 
definite prayer for recovery in cases of serious illness. 
If the pastor of a church be a wise and truly spiritual 
man, his prayer of faith will have a real curative power. 
Let a strong, courageous, pious, sympathetic, Christian 
minister enter a sick-room and offer a prayer in faith, 
not that God will evacuate His omniscience at our 
demand, but that He will hear and answer according to 

. 51 



52 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH, 

His wisdom, a prayer both confident and submissive, 
and hope and healing and comfort are nearer for the 
prayer. It is time for people who believe the gospel 
to make larger their faith in prayer as a help in healing 
the sick. The faith that cures the body will be doubly 
precious when it proceeds from, and strengthens, a work 
of grace in the soul. 

We can afford to be patient with all systems of heal- 
ing in which the cure, or attempt at cure, proceeds from 
healthy mental and spiritual conditions, even though we 
grow righteously indignant with the high-sounding but 
empty philosophy of one form, the cant and pious blas- 
phemy of another, and the well-paid fraud and extortion 
and charlatanry of a third. All of them, beneath their 
various admixtures of truth and error, contain the germ 
of a real spiritual benefit, available for all Christians. 



XI. The Discount on the Cures. 

I have conceded that many of the cures alleged to 
have been wrought by healers of different sorts are 
genuine. I have no desire to deny any of them. I 
could rather wish that all were true. Yet perhaps 
nowhere has there been more pious lying than con- 
cerning these very cures. Their capacity for exagger- 
ation is almost unlimited, and they gain their first 
credence among those most willing, sometimes pain- 
fully eager, to discern and acknowledge a benefit. In 
multitudes of cases the announcement of a cure has 
been premature, and the correction has not followed 
the original report with equal swiftness. That some 
of the published cures are followed by unpublished 
relapses any person of extended observation can testify. 
Dr. A. J. Gordon published in his " Ministry of Heal- 
ing " an incident which comes up for scientific con- 
sideration in The Medical Record for March 27, 1886, 
showing out of how small a fragment of truth was 
made the account of an alleged cure of a fracture by 
the noted Doctor Cullis. As apparently proving the 
healing of a broken bone by faith, it was eagerly seized 
upon and widely published, of course in good faith. 
But advocates of faith cure extend their work by the 
publication, not of their failures, but of their successes, 
and these, even in the best of cases, lose little in 
the telling, and generally shrink to very modest pro- 
portions under any careful investigation. 

53 



XII. The Dangers of These Delusions. 

We cannot afford to forget the positive harm which 
these systems do in the hands of their overzealous 
advocates. That those who trust themselves to these 
various "healers" sometimes die of curable diseases 
is not the worst thing to be said against them ; these 
give their lives voluntarily into the hands of the 
"healers" and assume their own risks. Sorry as we 
may be for the deluded, we may recognise our inability 
to prevent some forms of suicide by well-intentioned 
persons. But this is not the worst of it. Parents who 
believe in these delusions are torn asunder in their love 
for little children, doubting whether to give them 
proper aid in sickness is to distrust God ; contagious 
diseases are disregarded, denied, and spread ; and death- 
beds of good old saints, as I have myself witnessed, 
are tortured by fanatics who implore the dying one 
to believe and be healed, and who cast upon his dying 
mind the anxious burden of doubt whether indeed he 
might not recover but for the sin of his inability to 
rise. 

Let me cite an instance. A poor woman lay dying 
of cancer, which was fast eating out a vital organ. Her 
physicians, reputable men, informed her that she was 
past human help, and that an operation could only 
bring added pain and no relief. A series of good 

54 



THE DANGERS OF THESE DELUSIONS, 55 

physicians, the last two of whom I knew, did what 
they could to make her last weeks comfortable ; they 
could do no more. She was a Christian, but the wife 
of an easy-going drunkard ; and the future of her 
children, to whom she had been both father and 
mother, brought sad forebodings and strong desires 
for life. Hearing of a specialist who was said to be 
performing wonderful cures, she made great sacrifices 
to secure money to call him for a single visit. I thought 
the man a fraud, but even he was honest enough to 
assure her that she was past help. What was there 
for her to do but to seek to quiet her spirit in the 
few days of life that remained for her, and to commit 
her own overworked soul, and the future of her chil- 
dren, to God ? This she would have done, but there 
came certain Job's comforters, the same calling them- 
selves holiness women. Over against the wisdom of 
the physicians they placed their own unbounded igno- 
rance, and called it faith. "You shall not die if you 
believe," they told her; " the prayer of faith can save 
you." I fancy some will say that at least they could 
do her no harm ; that hers was quite a legitimate case 
for them to approach. But it did harm. They tortured 
that poor woman in her last hours with the conviction 
that only her own unbelief made recovery impossible. 
They told her that faith such as she ought to have 
would restore her to her children. They set her to ex- 
amining her motives and searching her soul and strain- 
ing her will to attain a faith which would enable her 
to live for her children's sake. All the self-reproach 



56 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

of failing to do her duty toward her little ones she 
felt in their implications. Thus were her last hours 
made hours of agony, the pain of the cancer exceeded 
by the anguish of her attempt to join with them in what 
they called "the prayer of faith. " Does not a single 
instance such as this show how far removed are such 
theories from the category of harmless delusions ? 

If the discovery of the power of God to work miracles 
through one's own ministration be really made, it ought 
to carry with it some growth in spiritual grace. Un- 
fortunately, it sometimes is accompanied by a cen- 
sorious spirit toward those who do not claim like faith 
and power. 

One morning I went to the door in answer to a ring, 
and there stood a man, rather ill-favoured, with a Bible 
under his arm. " Have you received the Holy Ghost 
since you believed ? " he demanded. 

" I have," said I. 

He opened his Bible and read, "' These signs shall 
follow them that believe . . . they shall lay hands on 
the sick, and they shall recover.' Have you received 
that power ? " he demanded. 

"Not to my knowledge," said I. " Have you ? " 

"Yes, I have," said he. "I have seen wonderful 
things, done wonderful things. I have seen things 
which I should not have believed if I had not seen 
them. I've come to testify of them to you." 

"Don't," said I. "I shall not believe them." 

" Do you mean to call me a liar ? " he cried. 

"No. You tell me you would not have believed 



THE DANGERS OF THESE DELUSIONS. 57 

these things if I had told them to you ; I certainly 
have no more confidence in your word than you in 
mine. If they were too wonderful for you to believe 
without seeing, I must see them. You need not tell 
them to me." 

He was a good deal disturbed, and showed some loss 
of temper. "You don't want to believe!" he cried. 
" You have hardened your heart against the truth ! 
You are a blind leader of the blind ! Test the Lord ! 
Investigate, as I have done, and you will believe ! " 

" I am ready to test the matter," said I. " Let me 
take your Bible ; you did not read the whole passage. 
Do all the powers there described go together ? " 

"They do," said he. "Whoever has received the 
Holy Ghost has them all." 

I read, " ' These signs shall follow them that believe, 
... if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt 
them/ Now, sir, I have in the house corrosive subli- 
mate and Rough on Rats. Will you take a dose now, 
or return for it after awhile ? " 

We parted quite abruptly, and as yet he has not 
returned, and I am without the evidence which he 
came to give me that his is the one and only truly 
divine method of healing men without medicine. 

I knew a man some years ago, who recently was 
taken sick and sent for his pastor, requesting him to 
bring the elders of the church, and pray over him, 
anointing him with oil. His pastor, a noble Christian 
gentleman, declined, saying, " I will come and pray, 
but if I use oil I shall want to use more than you 



58 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

desire, and I prefer to bring with me some Christian 
physician who knows better than I what oil to use, 
and how to use it. However, there is one officer of 
the church who agrees with you. I will come with 
him, and will pray, and he may anoint you according 
to your belief and method. But I recommend that, 
beside praying, you call a good physician." 

This did not satisfy the man, who thought, and 
wrongly, that his minister was lacking in spirituality. 
So he called a group of those who believed as he did, 
and they anointed him and prayed, and he died. It 
is not for me to say that their prayers did no good, 
but I am able to say on the authority of the board 
of health, who have shut up the house as at present 
unfit for human habitation, that they would have 
assisted his recovery more if, beside their praying, they 
had seen to the digging of a new cellar drain. 



XIII. The Healing of True Faith. 

If by answering our prayers God intended to do 
what we think we want, we should never dare to pray. 
These bodies of ours are not constructed for immor- 
tality, nor is this world God's best. Every man and 
woman of us, save the few who are to live till life 
becomes a burden, and those to be overtaken by sudden 
death, will one day face death with longings for life, 
and prayers that God will raise us up. We ought so 
to pray. We have no right to want to die while we 
are able to live and help the world. We shall pray 
to live, and in so praying we shall do our duty. But in 
God's good time, He will hear that prayer, and will 
answer it by taking us to the life everlasting and to 
larger service. 

Pitiful is the condition which I have seen now and 
again of good people who have prayed for the restora- 
tion to health of a dear one, and have seen him die, 
slipping away from the arms that clung to him so fran- 
tically, and the heart-broken parent, dazed with grief 
and the surprise, has said, " I shall never believe in 
prayer again ! " Poor heart-broken parent, thy faith 
should have been in God, not in thy prayer ! Learn 
now this one lesson, writ large that thou mayest read 
it even through thy tears, that prayer is not to the end 

59 



60 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

that God may share our unwisdom, but rather that we 
may see things as God sees them. 

Let no man say, " I have prayed the prayer of faith, 
therefore shall my loved one recover.' ' You have 
prayed the prayer of faith, and it shall not go unan- 
swered, but the answer to your prayer may come in 
strength to bear an impending sorrow. Paul prayed 
the prayer of faith, and his infirmity remained, but the 
grace of God in him abounded the more. Jesus prayed 
the prayer of faith, but He drank the bitter cup to its 
dregs. The servant is not above his Master ; it is 
enough that he be as his Lord. 

There is no word in all Scripture that encourages 
us to make our faith or prayer a substitute for the use 
of such means as God has revealed for the answering of 
our prayers. A man may say that he has faith in God, 
and then freeze between his stove and a full coal-hod. 
God will let him freeze, no matter how sincere his 
faith, unless he uses his own muscles for the placing 
of coal upon the fire. Now, the use of coal was no 
part of God's original revelation to man in Eden ; it had 
to be learned after thousands of men had frozen to 
death above unsunken coal-mines. The discovery that 
coal will burn, and, burning, will keep men from freez- 
ing, is as truly from God, and is surrounded by as 
imperative sanctions, as if it were part of Holy Writ. 
The man who treats that discovery as of little impor- 
tance, because it is not in the Bible, will be allowed to 
freeze to death just as certainly as if the truth of the 
properties of the coal were written on every page of 



THE HEALING OF TRUE FAITH. 6 1 

the Bible, nor will the prayers of a million misguided 
men, offered in his behalf, raise the thermometer one 
degree. In like manner men have made discoveries, as 
that a certain remedy assists nature's restorative proc- 
esses in a given disease, and that another destroys the 
disease-germs that impede the work of nature. These 
discoveries lay on men the obligation to accept the 
truth, and pray henceforth only as they avail themselves 
of what God has revealed, and men will die if they 
ignore them, even though they pray in faith. 

What, then, is the truth underlying these various 
systems, and what is the Biblical and sensible doctrine 
of faith cure ? It is possible that we cannot spell out 
in full the words of the divine message, but its essential 
meaning we may gather. 

The truth is that the mind has a most potent influ- 
ence upon the body, an influence whose limits are as 
yet unknown. An act of faith in anything believed to 
be good and powerful will influence both mind and body 
for good, whether the object of faith be real or fancied, 
good or evil. To the enlightened mind, faith in a 
degraded object becomes impossible ; it must be, if at 
all, in God or in some object believed to be good. Just 
in proportion to the intensity and serenity of the faith, 
and the perceived goodness and power of the God 
toward whom faith is exercised, will be the subjective 
blessing. This in itself is not small, and this is the 
first and fundamental answer to prayer. But God, 
whose power is great beyond our thought, becomes 
able in ways that we may not wholly fathom, to bless 



62 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

the hearts and minds of those who trust in Him. Out 
of this spiritual blessing flow blessings innumerable to 
body as well as brain. And while the blessing is not 
withheld from those who in their mental darkness 
mingle superstition with their worship, or even from 
those who substitute superstition for faith, the blessing, 
one in kind, is communicated in larger fulness to those 
whose faith is intelligent and heartfelt, and is exercised 
toward God alone. All health is from God. All health- 
giving processes, however obscured and obstructed by 
our ignorance and folly and superstition, are from God. 
Religions may help or hinder, but they cannot wholly 
thwart His mercy. Physicians may promote or impede, 
but they cannot wholly destroy the life-giving and life- 
sustaining and life-repairing processes of His universe. 
Superstitions by their fragment of the truth may assist 
more darkened minds, or by their admixture of error 
may make deeper the darkness, but they cannot wholly 
obliterate the light of His truth, which gives some 
elements of true faith to superstitions otherwise sad 
and degrading. Whatever makes for holiness, for 
wholeness, for health of body or soul, is from God. 
There is more divine healing than at first we recog- 
nise as such. All healing is divine. We wrongly re- 
strict the meaning when we apply it only to those 
cures which proceed from immediate religious influence. 
Every cure is an answer to prayer, prayer that in many 
cases has been wrung from the heart of sobbing cen- 
turies, and whose answer is revealed in some new 
method of saving life. 



THE HEALING OF TRUE FAITH 63 

Let me suppose two cases of men equally sick, and 
both beyond present human help. In the one case 
Christian men, uniting their prayers and faith, surround 
the bed, and pray for recovery, and recovery comes. 
They do not see that human means have availed, save 
those consequent upon prayer. Let them be thankful, 
and believe that their prayer has been answered. Still 
the case remains an isolated one, remarkable, and ac- 
counted divine just because it is unusual. In the other 
case, after centuries of effort and pain, and the unwearied 
toil of generations of physicians, some of whom prayed 
and some of whom did not, a remedy is found, which 
saves that man's life not only, but remains a permanent 
addition to human knowledge, a truth whose benefits 
are to accrue to all generations. Perhaps the last man 
who made the discovery did not pray at all ; perhaps 
the first man saved had no faith in prayer. Neverthe- 
less, I say that if one and only one of those cases is to 
be accounted divine healing, the one better deserves 
the name which represents the discovery of a perma- 
nent divine truth. I do not choose between them. I 
count them both divine, but if I had to choose the 
one or the other, I should choose the one which 
stands for the larger human gain, the one which has 
come as the result of both prayer and effort, and 
which abides as the answer to a thousand prayers 
yet to be offered. 

Through the skill and the blunders of the physicians, 
through the prayers and the toil of friends, through the 
heart-breaking disappointments and the glad rejoicings, 



64 FAITH AS RELATED TO HEALTH. 

we are learning better God's way of restoring health. 
This is from God. 

Through much pain and great needless suffering, we 
are coming to a better knowledge of the laws by which 
health may be maintained. Cures are from God, but 
much more so that soundness of health, that wholeness 
of body, which needs no healing. 

The average of human life grows steadily. 1 The 
thoughts and purposes of men grow large. So moves 
the world toward its larger and better future, and God 
lives more in the life of men. This is the source of 
health, of wholeness, of holiness, and these all are from 
the same root. Trusting in Him, we shall find strength 
for life's inevitable sorrows. Trusting in Him, we shall 
find strength sufficient for sickness and for health, for 
life and for death, for earth and for heaven ; and through 
that trust we shall find health and wholeness for our 
bodies and our spirits, which are His. 

This theory may not satisfy those who crave the 
supernatural, and who look for signs and wonders, nor 
is it likely to be acceptable to those who acknowledge 
no processes above those which they too narrowly call 
natural. But both these two classes have something 
to learn, and each may learn it from the other. The 
natural world is God's world. The earth as God made 
it, with its present physical and psychical laws, is good. 
He who postulates a Creator only that he may find a 
First Cause, and whose theory would be satisfied in prov- 

1 Professor Dolbear affirms that the average length of human life 
was thirty in 1800, and is forty in 1901. 



THE HEALING OF TRUE FAITH 6$ 

ing that God once was, must learn that God is, and 
that His methods are discernible in some places where 
we have been unaccustomed to look for them. But the 
spiritual world, also, is real, and the things which are 
not seen are the eternal things. Generation by genera- 
tion we shall learn better the relation of the material to 
the spiritual. We cannot afford in our half discovery 
of natural laws to create any philosophy of life that 
rules our God, or limits unduly the methods by which 
men become workers with Him. Already we know in 
part, and he is rash who affirms exhaustive knowledge 
of any one of God's methods. When we have uttered 
our last word of wisdom, we shall leave quite enough 
for the future to discover, and something for it to 
correct. And when human wisdom shall have made its 
final discovery of the divine method, it may be more 
ready than now to exclaim with Job : 

" Lo, these are but the outskirts of His ways, 
And how small a whisper do we hear of Him ! 
But the thunder of His power, who can understand? " 

(Job xxvi. 14, R. V.) 



THE END. 



AUG 26 1901 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




DQDaSTfi7S5A 



